The Shot Score is the first thing Lightpath shows you and the fastest way to decide whether to grab the camera. It is one number from 0 to 100, but it is built from four separate ingredients, and the number is only useful if you know which ingredient is dragging it down.
Light (45% of the score). This is computed from the sun's altitude, and at night from the moon and the Milky Way core. It peaks when the sun sits just above or just below the horizon — golden hour and blue hour — and collapses when the sun is high, because overhead light produces short, hard shadows and flat colour. Under a fully dark sky the bar rises again if the galactic core is up. Light is the single biggest factor because no amount of clear air rescues a scene lit from directly overhead.
Clouds (30%). Cloud cover comes from Apple Weather. Notice that the score does not punish a little cloud. Cover up to about 30% is treated as neutral, and the penalty ramps up above that. This is deliberate: thin, broken cloud is what makes sunsets spectacular, because it catches low-angle light and scatters colour across the sky. Solid overcast is what kills a shoot.
Moon (10%). During the day the moon is ignored. At night, a bright moon above the horizon reduces the score because it washes out the Milky Way and faint stars. Only the illuminated fraction and whether the moon is up are considered, so a thin crescent barely registers while a full moon costs most of the bar.
Air (15%). Air quality comes from Open-Meteo's US AQI index. Clean air means saturated colour and crisp distant detail. Smoke and haze flatten contrast and turn distant ridges grey, though a moderate amount of haze can add pleasing depth to layered mountain scenes.
Under the score you get a one-line verdict: Go shoot, Good, Fair — try another hour, or Poor — wait for the next window. The line below it names the sky state (daylight, golden hour, blue hour, the three twilights, or full dark with the core up or down) so you know why the number is what it is.
The most useful line is often Best next 24 h. Lightpath scans the coming day in 15-minute steps and tells you the moment with the highest score. That is your alarm-clock time.
The score is only as good as the forecast feeding it. Look at the caption under the four bars. When it reads clouds via Apple Weather · air via Open-Meteo, the numbers are live. When it reads sample values until the forecast loads, you are offline or the forecast has not arrived yet, and the Clouds and Air bars are placeholders. The Light bar is always real, because it is pure astronomy computed on your phone.
The score also cannot see your local horizon. A mountain to the west means golden hour ends earlier than the sun's altitude suggests. Use the Planner map and the AR sky view to check what is actually between you and the light.
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